


Checkers

by Terra



Category: Invaders, Marvel 616
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terra/pseuds/Terra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Making time, in between the fights, and during them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checkers

Everywhere is wet and cold, warsongs buzzing in his skull and pebbles stuck in his shoes. Oh the rifles, the rifles—he can feel the trigger through his soggy gloves, cold metal arches, solid and sure. Above him the sky is burning, gunpowder tugging at his throat. It's just a simple reconnaissance mission—Fury and his gang are going up the hill while they distract the Krauts with three companies of Canadian troops and two men caught on fire. Bucky lobs a grenade, watches the clumps of mud and sand fly up into the starlit afternoon.

***

  
It starts when Sgt. Fury comes to their headquarters with his arms full of maps, rolled-up and illegible. Outside, the London air is heavy with the threat of fire and rain, Nick's cigar-smoke tracing circles in the twilight. His two good eyes are hard-cut and unrepentant: very grown-up, very adult. Nick waves his charts around, Hell's Kitchen on his breath, then locks himself in the basement with Namor and Jim and Steve. Bucky and Toro both know that it's gonna be one of those nights.

"I don't get it," Bucky says, stuck on a sofa while the rest of them plot battles in a solid stone room. "I did Fury a solid a few months back—I wasn't too young for him then."

"I remember," Toro replies, sympathetic. "What'd he need you for, anyway?"

"Nothin' I really wanna talk about."

"Oh." Toro stares down at the floorboards intently, noticing the carpet's split-pea soup kind of green.

"No, not like that!" Flashes of silver run up Bucky's spine, like knives jumping out from the dark. "It's just not the kind of thing you talk about, that's all."

Toro understands.

***

You've gotta keep your eyes open, in a war, that's the first thing he learned. Bucky squints and blinks, soot catching his eyemask with black. Through the grime he can make out heads and hands, corpses watching him through the blank of their sockets. The sun weighs on him like something dead, but his whole skin is alive, humming with threat. It's a familiar feeling, latching onto Steve's shadow, and the song they were singing back on the carrier is still stuck in his head. Bucky catches it, an unquiet glory pressed tongue to teeth, as he moves a knife through an enemy stomach.

***

"Anything?" Toro hisses. "D'you hear anything?"

"No, like I told you," Bucky whispers back, annoyed. "And I'm not gonna if you don't shut up."

Their backs are both forced against the wall, Bucky's head pressed so hard to the door his neck is aching. Toro's scratching at the edges of his uniform, asking the same questions over and over again.

"I thought you were supposed to be good at this scouting thing."

"Well, it's sorta hard to read their lips when _the door is closed_ and they're speaking real quiet ‘cause _someone_ clued them in to the fact we were eavesdropping last time." By now he's taken his head away from the wall so he can look Toro in the face, make wide gestures with his hands.

"Hey, that wasn't my fault! You stepped on my foot."

"Awww, whatsamatter Raymond, can't take a little pain?"

"Will you just quit that already? I don't wanna get caught again, and you don't want third degree burns." Toro holds up one hand, fingers apart, punctuating the threat.

"Alright, alright." Bucky waves him away. "I'm not gonna be hearing anything, anyway. Checkers?"

"Swell. But I get blacks this time. You owe me for that time in Minsk."

Sometimes, when everyone else is busy being grown-up and important, Bucky and Toro play checkers. The games pass back and fourth, black to red, rations for rations and cigarettes for chocolate. Neither of them smoke, it's just nice to have things other people want. They find a room that is windowless and yellow; there's a picture of Christabel Leighton hanging in the corner, all curls and curves and secrets. It smells like aftershave and tonic, leaves their noses itching and their hands fidgeting in their pockets.

"So then," Bucky says, quirking an eyebrow and arranging his circles on the board. "Smoke goes before fire."

Toro grins, more than honest, before making his first move.

Two hours later, he has all of Bucky's cigarettes and a few pieces of his chocolate stuffed lazily into his fresh-pressed front pocket.

"Rotten luck's what it is," Bucky frowns. "I dunno why we don't just play poker." He always wants to play cards, but no one will let him near a deck. Bucky hasn't quite figured out the right way to win.

"I'm sure you'll beat me next time," Toro offers.

"Yeah. So'm I."

***

The grenade comes flying when Steve's back is turned, and Bucky's there in less than seconds.

"Cap—look out!" he cries, pushing the larger man to safety with still-damp hands. Bucky watches the grenade arc, clicking against the stone and grass. There's only enough time to close his eyes and cover his ears before the explosion riddles him with flames. When he gets a second chance to look he sees Toro in front of them both, all of him alight.

"You have to keep your eyes open, you know," he says. Through the fire, Bucky can't see him smile, his mouth pushing sideways in his best impersonation.

***

Two months after Christmas, Bucky comes back to the cemetery, making his way silently through the muggy air. He keeps the weight of his dead pressed against him, like it'll protect him from the cold. Kneeling in front of the grave, with its granite indentations and snow-topped angel, he realizes that Namor's right— it's a pretty paltry tribute.

Bucky sucks his breath in—_gee whiz, hot diggity_— tries to sort through his discarded memories. Fury's got a file, so he knows that Toro's wife is still alive somewhere in a Virginia nursing home, still moving through the world. Just like him, breaking through the water and the glass: tired, old, newborn. It takes a while to settle in, sometimes, silence pushing deep to ground, his mind full of the gaps censors leave in letters. These, though, are things he remembers.

There are footsteps in the muddy Manhattan snow Bucky thinks he could follow, like lines of fire through the dark.


End file.
